Monday, May 08, 2006

This is a local dessert commonly known as ondeh ondeh. Whether this is a Malay or Chinese dessert, I have no idea. Anyway, the original ondeh ondeh does not have a coconut filling. Normally it is made of a sweet potato dough wrapped with some chopped gula melaka and boiled in a pot of boiling water and then coat with some steamed shredded coconut.

For me, I have always like my ondeh ondeh with coconut fried with gula melaka instead. Here is my version.

Mixed mashed sweet potato, tapioca flour, sugar, pandan juice and colouring (if used) and knead into a dough. If dough is dry, you can add some water (a tbsp at a time) until dough is soft and not dry.

Pinch some dough and make into a small ball. Flatten it with your palm and put filling in it and wrap it up. Boil a pot of hot water.

When water boils, put the wrapped ondeh ondeh into the pot and let it cook. When ondeh ondeh floats to the top, the dough is cooked. Roll cooked ondeh ondeh in the steamed white coconut shreds.

Boil gula melaka, sugar and water until all the sugar dissolve. Sift the mixture. Pour the shredded coconut into the sifted mixture. Add in salt and mix well. Pour in flour mixture and stir until well mixed. Leave aside to cool before using.

78 comments:

hihi..i happen to come across a cotton sponge cake by angie who claims that she got the recipe from kitchencapers posted by you. As i am not a menber, could you kindly post the cotton sponge cake recipe on your blog?? i would greatly appreciate that cos it looks so nice!

Thanks all, do give this recipe a try. This is different from just using glutinous rice flour as the skin. This is a softer and sweeter kind of skin for ondeh ondeh. If you do try please share with me your experience ok?

Summy_Dreamzz, I will post my cotton sponge cake recipe for you. Hope you will like it.

Ma-li, if you don't want to have too much, you can half the recipe. You can get the grated coconut from NTUC. They are ok to be used. Remember to steam it with 1/2 tsp of salt before using it. This is to prevent the coconut from turning sour in our hot weather.

Hugbear, Just tried your ondeh ondeh. Very yummy, it's soft and yet with a slight delightful chew. I need to work on my filling though. I used solely gula melaka but yet to have the oozing into the mouth kinda filling yet. Any tips for me?

Hi there. I tried the ondeh ondeh recipe today. couldn't find tapioca flour so I used tapioca starch instead. not sure if that was the reason that the ondeh was so chewy.

i kept adding the tapioca starch, almost 3/4 tapioca starch : 1 portion of sweet potato. the sweet potato was so moist that I kept adding the starch, else it would be impossible to roll into a ball. i steamed the sweet potato hoping that it will be less moist but i guess it didn't help. any suggestions on what i did wrong?

hi leelee,PT here. tried your ondeh ondeh recipe today.husband and son like this recipe but daughter prefers the recipe with glutinous rice flour. with thinner skin, you can feel the spurts of gula melaka exploding in the mouth.on the whole, the skin texture is good, as it is soft and "QQ"(rubbery).however, i find working with tapioca flour a bit tricky. tapioca flour is sticky and the balls do get stuck at the bottom of the boiling pan, which results in gula melaka leaking out. do you have problem at the boiling stage?

hey.. i'm a 19yrs-old girl.. i like baking but never bake before coz i dun hav an oven.. i only hav an microwave oven bt i dunno how to use it for baking.. does anyone know how to use a microwave oven to bake chocolate cake? what equipments & ingredients that i need to use for baking the cake?

hi Hugbear, was really excited to try this recipe today but alas, there was no yummy ondeh ondeh at the end of it. had to keep adding tapioca flour...200gm tapioca flour to 300gm sweet potato before i can work with the mixture. recipe called for only 75gm of tapioca flour but was impossible to roll into ball before that. can only taste the chewy tapioca flour. appreciate your advice as to what went wrong. am determined to get this right & surprise hubby with it. thnx

Hi Sherry, actually the recipe calls for 150g of tapioca flour and not 75g. Was your mashed sweet potato very wet? Usually when I make this the sweet potato after mashing is not very wet, still a little dry. That is why after I add the tapioca flour, I still need to add a bit of water to knead until the dough is right to wrap the coconut filling.

hi ... i tried the receipe ... it works fine except that i think i need to have a better wrapping skill ... tried the coconut fillings but keep flowing out ... would suggest the fillings to be freeze before wrapping ... use pandan juice by pounding it and squeezing it before filtering it .... dough turned out to be jade green with nice pandan smell ... used about 200gm of tapioca flour with around 600 gm of sweet potato ... would suggest yellow potato to make a nice colour ... thanks for the receipe !! looking forward to try out ur other recipe ... Bray

The shredded coconut w/o skin(you have explain) is for the decortion outside the Ondeh Ondeh (white like feather)but how abt the 1 coconut w/o skin (shredded)that to be put inside the filling. My question is that cream coconut or the look like feather.

The shredded coconut w/o skin is the same type for the inside and the outside. Except that for outside, you need to add 1 tsp of salt to it and mix it well and steam for 5 mins before using it to coat the cooked ondeh ondeh.

The inside one, you need to cook it with the sugar and gula melaka to make it as the filing. The picture shown here should be able to give you a good picture of how to use the shredded coconut. Hope this is clear to you now.

I have tried the ondeh ondeh. Well it my first time and turn out Successful.

After boil the gula melaka it really difficult to wrap it. My Sweet potato seen to be very thick.

As I duno how many gm is 1 coconut w/o skin (shredded)So I bought from ntuc is 250gm. I use all at the filling and not sure is it the reason I left over some filling.Which I duno what to do with it and i just throw away haiz quite a waste. I will make again....Thanks for your help Me Lee Lee

Kueh dadar is it the food wrap with green colour skin. Ya that a nice food too but could you share wif me your recipe.Beside doing the ondeh ondeh I have tried alot of your dish. Butter cake,Beggar chicken,fried tung hoon etc End of 2009 should be able to completed all your blog dishes.People say I'm crazy.. Hard working reading recipe more then study..haha. You may email the recipe to ohk82@hotmail.com. Thanks alot hugbear

Thank you, Lee! Finally achieved the oozing into the mouth kinda filling by following your advice... chop gula melaka into small pcs and btw, I used Japanese sweet potatoes, really taste yum, yum. Thumbs up for your great recipe!

For the filling of the ondeh ondeh, if i were to use only gula melaka, do i need to boil it first before straining it? My mum told me that some contains tiny sand-like particles. But i remember just choppping it up withing boiling it when i was in my home econs class. Please kindly enlighten. Many thanks.

I'm only recently started baking and making desserts and still very new!ondeh ondeh has been one of my childhood fav, and i wanna try to learn to make them!prob is, there are so many recipes with diff variations,ie. using glutinous flour instead of tapioca flour, and not using sweet potatoes etc.cld u kindly advise on what's the difference? and how would it affect the end result? cos I really don't know which recipe t choose from! thanks!cld u reply to my email?sparklesz06@hotmail.com

If you use only glutinious rice flour to make the ondeh ondeh, the texture will be very chewy and not soft. By using sweet potato it gives it a softer texture. It depends on what type your personal preference is.

I tried today using your recipe, but disappointing result as I have problem trying to make the ball with the filling inside. The filling keep flowing out and the dough seems to be not able to stick it well!! My first attempt!!!Any tips on how to roll the ball with the filling not flowing out??

Hi McFadyen-Koh, you can try to make the skin thicker if you have problem wrapping the filling in. Also try to make the filling a bit more sticky. That is, use a bit of plain flour mix with water to fry the filling at the last part to make it a bit more sticky so that it can be easier to wrap it in.

I tried making the ondeh ondeh twice, the skin was soft and nice at the very moment when they were cooked from the pot but after sometime when they cool down, the skin becomes tougher. How can I modify the skin to make it softer? By adding more water to the dough?

I'm a Singaporean living in USA now. My partner is craving for ondeh ondeh that we haven't been eating for a long sometime. Could like to check with you is it possible to use pandan essense instead of pandan leave, as i can't find it here. How many drops should i put? Besides, how many serving would you recommend for your recipe? Can i use japanese sweet potato?

Hi RZ, you can use pandan paste. No problem at all. Even in Singapore where pandan leaves are easily available, I also like to use pandan paste due to laziness. Yes, any kind of sweet potato is fine. The colour of your ondeh ondeh may not be green in color.

Hi RZ, yes you can use pandan paste. But if you want to use Jap sweet potato and it is purple in colour, just omit the pandan paste and let your ondeh ondeh takes on the natural colour of the sweet potato. If you use orange sweet potate like what I did here it will turn out like a dark orange colour. Only if you are using very light yellow colour sweet potato then you can add pandan paste to get the green colour like normal ondeh ondeh.

Hello! Just made my very first attempt at ondeh-ondeh today, and it was a terrific experience! My first batch was a DISASTER! The dough was too moist, the gula melaka kept leaking and during the boiling stage, it turned the water brown. >n< It was such a sad sight to see it turn out that way, mostly due to impatience and excitement.

So, I made a second batch! 100% improvement, really! It turned out cute, no leaking, boiled perfectly, and turned out awesome. I'd like to know how I can achieve the kind of texture where it explodes in your mouth, and the sugar oozes all over? =)

Thanks for your recipe. After searching for a soft texture ondeh2, I think I will try yours. Lovely pic.BTW, do you think I can omit the sugar in the dough, hubby cannot take too much sugar. Thank for your reply. God bless all that your do.